I agree with you. The value of the heuristic is in the 99.9% and the value of the person is in the 0.01%. That's why doctors are so valuable. It's for those times when someone comes back and says, "It didn't work." If we waste the doctor's time on the 99.9%, then they lose their primary function of being the expert during the unexpected. For an individual, they may seem interchangeable with a rock, but for a society, they are not. This is because while the probability of cancer per unit of human doesn't change (enough to matter for this illustration), the more people there are, the probability of cancer per unit of time does increase. 0.01% of a lot is still something.
Crucially, however, the security guard and doctor are roles that have value in their responsive nature. Then you have the part of the article where you are talking about roles that have value in their predictive nature. And for those, yeah, the author has a point.
> If we waste the doctor's time on the 99.9%, then they lose their primary function of being the expert during the unexpected.
I don't agree that this is a waste of time. The reason why we go to the doctor when we have unusual pains and aches is because we are not qualified to decide whether it's a minor annoyance or a symptom of a life-altering problem. We're seeking out an expert to help make that determination.
If two people could walk in with the same described symptoms, but one just ate something that disagreed with them, and the other has stomach cancer, then doctors must do at least a basic diagnostic exam on the spot, and not turn the patient away for days or weeks to see if the problem goes away on its own. This isn't a "waste" of time at all.
I just saw a PA a couple weeks ago about a knee injury. The end result was that she did tell me to take ibuprofen for a few weeks and then report in how it feels. But, before that, she spent a good 20 minutes asking about the history of the injury, and then felt around to see if there was anything noticeably wrong. And after that she gave me an idea of what the next steps would be if it doesn't get better on its own. The entire experience gave me confidence that she was attentive to what I had to say, knew what she was talking about, and had a plan in case things don't get better.
If she had merely listened to me for 5 minutes, and then told me to take ibuprofen for a few weeks and call back if it's not better, and that was it, I would not have felt good about that encounter, and would have gotten a second opinion from another doctor.
Of course, this also raises the question of whether or not doctors who put in that bare-minimum, insufficient amount of effort (as described in the article) actually are common. I really hope they aren't! But maybe they are, I dunno. The author is a medical professional (albeit on the mental health side), so I would expect he'd have a better idea of how common that is than I do.
Crucially, however, the security guard and doctor are roles that have value in their responsive nature. Then you have the part of the article where you are talking about roles that have value in their predictive nature. And for those, yeah, the author has a point.